By: Jingwei Zhao

In the month of October, a special event took place around the country, the largest pumpkin weigh-off! Many locations held the event, but the biggest was in Half Moon Bay, California.

Travis Gienger, a horticulture teacher from Minnesota broke the American record for the heaviest pumpkin with a monstruous vegetable weighing in at 2,560 pounds! It weighed almost 200 pounds more than the previous record and his winnings from the event totaled to a whopping $23,040, with one pound being the equivalent to $9.

This is NOT Travis’ first time winning the competition. 2 years ago in 2020, Travis also won the competition with a 2,350-pound gourd. After that, he carved his pumpkin and nicknamed it “Tiger King,” which broke the WORLD Record for the largest jack-o-lantern by circumference. Despite the massive successes of Gienger, his American Record was just short of the World Record, which weighs 2,703 pounds.

Gienger knows many ways to take care of his pumpkin, such as fertilizing the soil, looking out of roots, and watering. However, he also used some more advanced techniques such as covering the pumpkin with plastic sheets during heavy rain and providing it with shade on extremely hot days. The next paragraph will revert back to this year’s competition.

Steve Daletas was the runner up of this year’s competition with his 2,425-pound pumpkin submission and Ruben Frias took 3rd place with his 2,118-pound entry. However, the pumpkin weight competitions are only one of the many types of pumpkin-related events. Others include competitions for the largest pumpkins from different regions and the best-looking pumpkins.

After reading four short paragraphs of pumpkin competitions, you might want to grow a giant pumpkin yourself. Guess what? You are in luck because this article also contains information on that as well! I will not dive TOO deep in, but I will tell you the basics. There are special seeds for growing giant pumpkins that you can buy. After that, you need good soil with earthworms that can help process decaying material and a lot of space. In the start of May, germinate the seeds. Giant pumpkins also all-day sun! I am not a pumpkin growing specialist myself, so do some more research on growing them. With enough skill and experience, you can win a pumpkin competition yourself!